Tower of Brahma. 62 D. This is a novel. (edit)

5/10/10

Art does not exist in a vacuum. That was the last lucid thought I had running through my brain as I scrambled to put down the information that was growing in my mind.

This book is something important. I'm thinking of something, devising a plan, scoping the pattern of everything that is and ever will be. The meaning of life, if possible, but exploring every mystery between here and there.

It doesn't matter if this work matters in any way with any piece of writing that has ever been created. Whatever came before was of its time, crafted by its influences, bending an idea through a symbolic pattern of letters from something called an alphabet.

And in English no less. By an American. From an historical aspect, what could be more removed from anything ancient and physical? Far from that battle of survival, wits and strength, tempered with wisdom and experience. The language was new, the country was new, it's people so diverse genetically, a true culturally and socially enmeshed mankind the likes the Earth has never seen.

We dwelled mired in the daily occurrences of pop stars, celebrity corpses, and mad branded icons of fame. We hungered for reality, senses sharpening, pulse-rate quickening, visceral moments. Some of us wrote those down, painted them, screamed them out with notes. We made Art. Abstract thought given form brought humans out of the darkness of their being.

Stumbling towards the bright light, the pretty flame, rationalizing with logic our hearts desires. We wanted more of whatever was beyond our grasp. We were two opposing forces spun into motion, still spiraling outwards from the Big Bang. An atomic birth, a quantum fusion, energy reacting, exploding into infinity.

Everything gets bigger as things get smaller. The possibilities are greater as our souls and bodies are battered and run down, kept occupied with a weekday task that allows us with just enough life left in us to drink our cares away. Our gadgets shrink in our very hands, digital landscapes opening up in our palms. You gaze down into the app that will become your personality.

A metal/plastic all-purpose personality storage device. Digital images, handheld video, mp3 soundtrack to score our descent. We simultaneously drop into Hell as our consciousness transcends to Nirvana. Our bodies rot, our awareness expands. Those left alive live comfortably, within gelatinous sacks filled with nutrient goo, wired for Blue-Ray, Plasma HD, 3D, stereo surround-sound, Hi-Def, Bluetooth Wireless Connectivity to the Central Router.

The last bastion of humanity. The 64 blobs that lie on the horizon, sitting in bunches sometimes, swatted into a ditch of scorched earth by some wandering demonic beast. I counted them out and checked them off. The devil wanted an exact number. Who's left?

And I was the errand boy. A younger self of one of these sad sack, re-wombed, pathetic examples of the last people on earth. In one of these bobbing water balloon eggs was me at sixty years old. Having become successful enough to afford my very own Armageddon life-raft, I apparently somehow pluck my 33 year old self, me, and plop him here after God's Reckoning.

A New York City picked clean by rotted, gnarled bits of bone that these monsters call teeth. Large stabbing, piercing, eviscerating tusks of mustard colored fangs. Bits of human carnage wedged in its gums, a discernible body part popping from a back molar as it screeches the deadening shriek of eternal damnation.

This moment is your last.

But its not. The devil has a deal. Live. Walk. Experience what's left of my race. Then sign the contract, get whatever I want, do a favor for him, and eternal bliss. Wait, what's the favor? I don't remember offering up my services in any sort of post-apocalyptic janitor, sweeping torsos and limbs into bins, clearing streets of bodies.

"That's not what I want." It really wasn't a big deal.

"Alright, well I signed...", I said. "What now?"

That's when he left me in decayed Brooklyn, shattered brownstones, a ring of rubble circling Prospect Park. The temple that was the Brooklyn Museum still stood, despite savage anger delivered to its columns by all manner of misshapen beasts. I had a free pass. All but invisible to their animalistic senses, their bloodlust.

It was here, besides a lake of hellfire, I found a stash of the orbs. Giant old pantyhose containers, the oversized Easter eggs, and inside every one was a blob of white chocolate. A rich executive of a company, the designer of the orb technology, the president perhaps. But each one had something in there that I needed.

I tapped one with my foot to watch it warble like a water snake, but it held firm, not quite the kiddie pool inflatable I imagined. Flexible but secure. It looked like something found in nature from another planet or dimension, totally acceptable sitting in a giant nest as massive leathery wings flapped all about me, their shadows dipping overhead, as if to keep me on task.

From my pocket I pull out the handheld that the devil gave me. It was clunky, old school, had heft and weight to it. Dark wood paneling, vinyl grooves, and a chrome finish. The screen came to life, flickering from Apple IIe green dot matrix, to 16-bit, NTSC to PAL, VCR quality. It snapped with my brain and I began to interface.

I went inside myself first. Realizing that the lump of plastic and metal was just a formality. Something that resembles what I knew in my life, the tech of my era, to represent an idea. Connecting electronically, which triggered the psychic link. And from there, I took aim, dead center of the oval before me, and fired.

9600k baud modem squelch.